A club at Skyline raised awareness about a continuing issue in the entire the world—hunger.

The Skyline college ceramics club hosted its second Empty Bowls Fundraiser on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2011 in the cafeteria of building 6. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness for all of those struggling with hunger.

Empty Bowls is a community movement with a goal to end hunger. Those in attendance at the fundraiser had the chance to purchase a ticket for $10 to the event which included a hand-made ceramics bowl with the chance to fill it with different varieties of soup from Skyline’s Pacific Dining Cafe.

Ceramics is known as functional and visual art. It may involve clay, drawing, decorating, hard building, or sculpture. Over 350 bowls were made for the event by the students in Skyline’s ceramics courses, as well as students from Capuchino High School’s ceramic & peace clubs.

Jeff Richards, the Skyline College ceramics club president is a current student in Skyline’s advanced ceramics course. He went on to explain what he loves about ceramics class and how it’s helped him deal with his stressful job.

“The sense of community in the ceramics class is nice, we’re friends outside the studio,” said Richards. “It’s like we’re freshening each other’s artistic growth.”

In 2009, Skyline hosted the Empty Bowls event for the first time during which they raised over $2,400. At the time, all of the money raised was donated to the Daly City food pantry. This year, all of the proceeds of the event will go to the Food Pantry at run by the Sparkpoint organization at Skyline College.

Tiffany Schmierer, the club advisor and ceramics instructor at Skyline, also went on to explain the benefactors of the Empty Bowls event.

“We wanted to make sure the benefactor is as local as we can get community wise,” Schmierer said. “Once we became aware that there was a food pantry at the Sparkpoint center on campus, we thought we couldn’t get more local than that,” said Schmierer. “It benefits our immediate students and their families.”

Currently, there are over 35 students in the ceramics club at Skyline. The club meets one Saturday each month to plan and organize events, as well as to raise and share any new ideas about the art of ceramics. For any student interested in joining the club, the ceramics studio is located in building one and students are welcome to speak to the club advisor Tiffany Schmierer.